Ships Which Brought the Neffs to America

On 29 May 1735 the ship Mercury, William Wilson, master, last from Rotterdam, Holland arrived at Philadelphia, Penn., with 186 passengers. Most of these passengers were from Zurich and nearby Swiss towns. These people were members of the Reformed Church in Switzerland.... This colony is one of the few whose history can be traced from origin to destination with some detail. On 7 Oct. 1735, The Nachrichten von Zurich ( a newspaper), published the account.... The journey of the colonists from Zurich to Basle is told by Ludwig Weber, one of the emigrants who later returned from Holland. His notes were published in Zurich . The following is taken from his notes.

"...The main body consisting of 194 persons, embarked in two ships [on the river to the ocean, in winter weather]. They suffered intensely thru rain and cold and were poorly protected with scanty clothes and provisions.... the nights were wet and cold. Moreover the ships were crowded so badly that there was hardly enough room to sit, much less lie down. There was no opportunity to cook on the ships; and as they were compelled to remain on the ships day and night, the cries of the children were pitiful and heartrending. ...Quarrels between men and women were frequent."

... [They transferred from the two river ships to the single, larger ship Mercury in late February, so] after leaving Mainz their journey was a little more comfortable as they could at least cook on board the ships.

...186 passengers in all on the ship Mercury that reached Philadelphia 29 May l735....

In a letter from John Henry, the son of Rev Goetschy, to Zurich dated 21 July 1735 wrote in part the following: "After we had left Holland and surrendered ourselves to the wild and tempestuous ocean, its waves and its changeable winds, we reached through Gods great goodness toward us, England. After a lapse of two days we came to the Island of Wight, and there to a little town named Cowes, where our captain supplied himself with provisions for the great ocean trip. We secured medicines for the trip and then with a good East wind we sailed away from there. After a day and a night with the good wind we were buffeted with a terrible storm and the awful raging waves as we came into the Spanish and Portuguese oceans.

For 12 weeks we were subjected to these miseries and had to suffer all kinds of bad and dangerous storms and terrors of death. With these we were subjected to all kinds of bad diseases. The food was bad for we had to eat what they called "galley bread". We had to drink stinking muddy water, full of worms.

We had an evil tyrant and rascal for a captain and first mate, who regarded the sick as nothing more than dogs. If one said "I have to cook something for a sick man", He replied "get away from here or I'll throw you overboard". "What what do I care about your sick devil?". In short, misfortune is everywhere upon the sea, we alone fared better. This has been the experience of all who have come to this land and even if a king were to travel the ocean it would behave no better.

After being in this misery sufficiently long God, The Lord, brought us out and showed us the land, which caused great joy among us. But three days passed, the wind being contrary, before we could enter into the right river. Finally a good south wind came and brought us in one day through the glorious and beautiful Delaware river which is a little larger than the Rhine, but not by far as wild as the Rhine." [They landed at Philadelphia, PA]

[ ed note: The Neffs on this trip were of the G-Line and P-Line from Wallisellen, Canton Zürich, Switzerland: Jacob Naf age 39; Jacob Naf age 24; Jacob Naf age 7; Conrad Naf age 22, Conrad Naf age 52; Anna Naf age 19; Anna Naf age 22, Elizabeth Naf age 4 ]

"This journey lasts from the beginning of May to the end of October, fully half a year."

"During the voyage there is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouthrot, and the like, all of which comes from old and sharply salted food and meat"

"The water which is served out on the ships is often very black, thick and full of worms, so that one cannot drink it without loathing, even with the greatest thirst..."

"Many sigh and cry: 'Oh, that I were home again [even] if I had to lie in my pigsty!' "

"The lice abound so frightfully, especially on sick people, that they can be scraped off the body..."

"... children from 1 to 7 years rarely survive the voyage... no less than 32 children in our ship [died and were] thrown into the sea."

- Crew and Passengers:

The ship's crew did not live or eat any better than their passengers during their trip. Crew and passenger alike slept in hammocks in the dark, damp, cold areas below deck. These were cargo ships not passenger ships, so there were no cabins or walls for privacy; there were no portholes to admit light and fresh air. They all shared the communal "outhouses" at the head of the ship. The privacy of the outhouses was the only concession made to female passengers. (Regular cargo and military ships, having only men on board, had no outhouses, just seating boards with their holes situated over the bow wave at the head of the ship hence, the term "head" for a ship's toilet.) The living area in the ship had to be an odoriferous environment; they had no fresh water for washing clothes or bathing, no deodorant, no toothpaste and no toilet paper. The worst of these ships were denied a place at their arrival dock in America because of the strong stench the ship gave off. These ships were forced to anchor downwind of the city and had to use row boats to take the passengers from the ship to the dock. (Sailors on whale ships in the middle of the Atlantic claimed they could smell upwind immigrant ships when they were miles away.)

The crew and our ancestors shared the same spoiled food and filthy drinking water. Their meat was heavily salted pork, mutton and occasionally horse, but rarely beef, which was stored in wooden barrels in the hold. The meat had to be soaked in water to get the salt and mold off of it before it was boiled to cook it. The grease and fat were skimmed off while the meat was boiling and used as lubrication ("slush") between the mast and spars. No cooking could be done when the ship was in rough seas because the fire in the cooking stove had to be extinguished, sometimes for days, to eliminate the fire hazard in the wood ship.

Their drinking water was untreated river water stored in wooden barrels in the hold. The dark interior of the barrels allowed bacteria, bugs and worms to grow (free from the predators which normally would have killed them) turning the formerly clear liquid into a rancid brown jelly full of crawling vermin. Cholera microbes thrived in these conditions resulting in death of the weaker passengers. (The British Navy mixed Rum and Lime juice in the foul water, creating "grog" to make it more palatable. Minor infractions were handled by withholding the offending sailor's rum ration so he had to drink the foul tasting water straight as his punishment.)

Uncooked flour could not be stored in the humid conditions on board a ship so it was mixed with water and salt and baked into biscuits called "hardtack" which could be stored on board in barrels. Rats liked hardtack and chewed their way into the barrels to eat the biscuits, leaving their dung among the biscuits. The name hardtack was fitting; the biscuits were so hard that they had to be broken with a mallet or the butt of a gunstock before they were usable as food. People with teeth loosened by scurvy could not bite or chew the hardtack so it was used to make soup by cooking the biscuits in water with salt, vinegar and fat skimmed from the boiled meats. The soup also had an extra protein ingredient - hundreds of bugs. As the stored hardtack aged it developed a putrid odor and filled with maggots and beetles, many of which ended up in the soup when the biscuits were added. The procedure for opening a barrel of hardtack included the routine of placing a piece of rotted meat on top of the biscuits to draw out the maggots. When the piece of meat was full of maggots it was replaced by another piece and this process was continued until no more maggots could be lured out by the meat. The maggots and beetles still remaining in the hardtack, along with the ever-present rat dung, became part of the soup our ancestors ate while on the ship.

If the ship ran low on food the crew and passengers trapped and ate the rats which they called "millers" because of flour in the rats' fur from their favorite food - hardtack. Curiously, most sailors did not like fish and, until they ran out of rats to eat, seldom took the obvious step of fishing to improve their diet. Part of their reluctance to fish for food had to be caused by the fact that the officers had first claim to the fish they caught, leaving the sailors with nothing to show for their work unless they caught far more than the officers needed.

As bad as the food was on board it was still better, and provided more regularly, than what many of the sailors ate when they were not on board a ship. The sailors were men whose lack of marketable skills or training (sometimes compounded with a criminal record) forced many of them into the lowest poverty levels and near starvation while on land.

- Health Care:

The poor diet lead to a multitude of health problems; the worst probably being "scurvy" which was the result of the lack of vitamin C. Scurvy caused the nose, eyes, and gums to bleed, caused scars of old wounds to re-open and bleed, all while its victims' gums rotted so their teeth loosened and fell out. British Naval Ships carried lime juice to provide vitamin C (hence the slang "Limey" for English sailor), but passenger ships did not adopt this successful preventive measure. Eventually, faster ships were built and they helped reduce the threat of scurvy by getting passengers to America before scurvy could take its deadly toll on them.

Everyone on board the ship was infested with lice and fleas brought along by the rats in the hold. In fact, these ships bought brought more than just human immigrants; they also introduced the European Cockroach and the German Rat into America. The lice spread Typhus between the passengers who often died from it.

There was no medical care available during the trip unless a Physician happened to come on board as a passenger. One of the ship's crew might be referred to as a "surgeon" but it meant only that he had experience cutting off injured legs and arms using nothing more than a knife and a saw. The limb amputation was performed in dirty conditions, while the screaming patient was pinned down by several sailors, without anesthetics. Afterwards the bleeding stump was dipped in molten tar to seal it. Given the universal poor personal hygiene, along with ignorance of germs or bacteria at that time, one wonders how so many patients managed to survive such a "cure."

Infected wounds were successfully, but very painfully, treated by packing them full of sea salt, the only antibiotic available at the time.

Child birth during the ocean trip usually resulted in the death of either the child or the mother, if not both. Young children and elderly people often did not have the strength to survive the trip. As many as 40% of the passengers died on these 3-month long trips, so the immigrant ships to America were commonly referred to as "Coffin Ships." Even so, there were no coffins; the dead on German, Dutch and English ships were simply sown into their hammock along with one or two cannon balls for weight, and then were thrown over the side into the sea. Some French ships buried their dead in the ballast stones in the hold, further increasing the stench and health hazards in the ship.

- Ship's Officers:

The ship's officers had much better food and living conditions. The senior officers usually shared a private, but windowless cabin and toilet area; while the captain always had a large, private, windowed cabin with a dining area and a toilet area of his own. The floor of the captain's cabin was covered with sailcloth which had been painted to resemble carpeting. The captain's cabin often had furniture and trim similar to what was used in homes on land. Captains could take their wife or a friend on the trip if they wanted to.

The officers kept several live pigs, goats and an occasional cow or two on board to provide fresh meat along with chickens to provide fresh eggs - all for themselves. The officers' meat was baked or roasted, not boiled like the crew and passengers' meat. The senior officers' food was served to them at their dining table by cabin boys or by the junior officers. All officers usually drank wine or beer with their meals instead of water. The ship's cooking stove usually had a small still built into it to turn sea water into fresh drinking water for the officers, but it could not provide enough for the crew and passengers. Any extra fresh water the officers did not drink, they used for shaving instead of sharing it with their passengers or crew.

They usually sold any belongings they had, partially for the resulting cash, but mostly to avoid the cost of shipping them to the new country. This seldom gave them enough money to purchase tickets so they "indentured" themselves to the ship's captain. The captain would pay for their food during the trip and give them passage on his ship. Once the ship reached their destination, the captain would sell their indentured rights to the highest bidder on shore. The captain made his money back plus a profit for his investment.

The immigrant, now an indentured servant, or voluntary slave, to the purchaser, worked for free for the purchaser to repay him. The length of time of indenture, usually 2 - 3 years, was predetermined and agreed upon by all parties before the purchase was completed. The purchaser was obligated to provide proper clothing, food and housing during the period, and sometimes required to provide a small sum of cash or hand tools at the end of the indenture period. At the end of their indenture the immigrant was free to pursue his or her own destiny, often with a new trade or skill learned from the indenture period.

While some indentured servants were treated poorly, most had good experiences and often remained friends with the purchasing family. It was common for the indentured servant to end up married to a relative or friend of the purchaser.

There were cases where one person could afford to buy a ticket on a ship, but their friend, spouse or other relative had to be indentured for their ticket. Occasionally, both were allowed to work for the purchaser, thereby cutting the indenture period in half while allowing them to remain together.